Your Silence A Mirror
by 7types
Summary: Lily is gone but not dead.


It was a dark grey afternoon in Diagon Alley and the freezing rain was sheeting down almost horizontally. Nevertheless, Severus decided against having a hot drink and was about to apparate away when he saw the unmistakable flash of red hair above the raised collar of a grey mac. He had not spoken to Lily since… it had to have been before they'd left school, certainly. She would not want to speak to him, he told himself even as he lengthened his stride to catch up with her as she turned into the teashop across the way.

She paused at the threshold and looked straight at him. He stopped, at a loss for words. Her glance was even, without the hostility he'd expected, but there was something off about her, something he couldn't quite put his finger on.

"Severus," she said gravely. "I haven't seen you around much. Come sit with me. We should talk."

He followed her mutely, while she chose a table far from the window and ordered a pot of tea and a plate of violently colored iced cakes. His first impression of something amiss deepened into an unsettling certitude.

"Lily," he began, and faltered, discomfited by the wide-eyed calm gaze she turned on him. This surface calmness had never been present in the Lily he'd known, whose eyes had always immediately reflected her emotions. "Lily, I…" he'd intended to start by apologizing all over again – but what, he thought, would be the point, now? "Is everything alright, Lily?"

"With me? Yes, of course. Listen, Sev, I know we haven't had a chance to talk, and I don't know when I'll see you again." Unexpectedly, she reached out and took hold of his wrist. His left wrist. He started and made to pull away, but she tightened her grip.

"I have been thinking of you lately," she continued after a short pause. "Look, it's not as if we can pick up where we left off; frankly, I don't know if we can be friends again, now. But, like I said, I've been thinking of you, and… I'm getting to think I should not have dropped you then. Don't get me wrong – what you said then was the cherry on top of all the other horribleness. It was an awful thing to say, maybe even unforgivable. But one of the things I've been thinking is that there are times to simply hold on _no matter what_, and maybe this was one of those times and instead I let go. I'm not talking about who deserved what, or being right or wrong, morally; just that it looks as if it would have been better all around if I hadn't done that. And the other thing is – this is _important_, Sev, please try to remember this – it is wrong to try and own people, and it is also not actually possible. If someone tries to make you think they own you, you need to run, like, right away, because this person is a nutter with no concept of reality and probably also has a knife. No one owns you. No one. Remember this. Please."

Her nails dug into his wrist. He stared at her, openmouthed. Maybe she'd guessed at what he'd finally done, maybe she was upset about it, but this seemed like such an odd way to tell him that. He'd have expected a flood of recriminations, or teary-eyed silent regret, not these cryptic pronouncements calmly delivered over tea and cake.

"Lily, is he… Is Potter treating you alright?"

She leaned back, letting her hand drop back onto the table.

"Yes. Yes, I am happy at home. It's… outside that things are going wrong all over the place, but you know that already, don't you. Listen, I'm sorry if all this sounded strange, but I needed to talk to you, is all. I'm glad I ran into you. I was afraid I wouldn't get the chance before it was too late. Everything is so… out of joint these days, you never do know when you get a chance to talk to someone."

"The time is out of joint," he murmured mechanically.

"Well, it's no good trying to set it right by _killing_ people, is it," Lily said briskly. She picked her handbag off the floor and put her Muggle mac back on over her robes. "I'll be seeing you, Severus. We need to figure out a way to stay in touch. Maybe go see a movie next time, or something. I'll see what I can do." The glass door swung back, forth, and she was another dark silhouette outside, gradually merging into the twilit crowd.

A little over a year later, the world woke up to the news that Voldemort was gone. That he had taken Lily (and James) with him did not dampen the celebrations. Severus, curled up in disconsolately in his dungeons, had never felt so irrevocably cut off from the human race.

The first dire paroxysms of grief passed, and what Severus thought of as pain's secondary phase set in dully and relentlessly. In this fog of ache and befuddlement, Severus appeared before the Wizengamot and listened to Albus Dumbledore's duly given testimony. He watched with indifference as the chains dropped from his wrists, and Dumbledore steered him out of the small courtroom, to the elevators, and through the floo. The following term he was back in the classroom, and if his gestures seemed tired and his vitriol flagged, it was not enough for the children to notice the difference.

Inexorably, the days passed, and Severus found himself again growing aware of the world. "Time heals all wounds," Dumbledore had told him, with the air of one imparting the secrets of the universe. But the sense of Lily's presence beside him never waned, as he'd half expected it to. If his brief service to the Dark Lord had taught him anything, it was that all pain, no matter how strong, came to an end. Instead of fading however, Lily's memory was clearer and sharper than ever. This, along with Lily's odd behavior in the teashop, perturbed him enough to voluntarily seek out Dumbledore. "I believe there may be something… not quite right here," he'd told Dumbledore, frustrated with his own inability to convincingly articulate his reasons. "Are you truly certain both of them died then?" he tried again. Dumbledore had sighed, half-disappointed and half-exasperated, and intoned something about Severus' guilt, consequent duty, and so forth. Clearly, he did not intend to think about what Severus had said or investigate anything, so Severus tuned him out and waited to be dismissed.

"But enough of that," Dumbledore concluded, abruptly changing his tone. "I want to know how you're doing, Severus. Are your classes going well? You _have_ been looking a bit peaked lately." He smiled, and to Severus' astonishment, his gaze held genuine warmth. "You know, maybe you should go out on the weekends. It does a young man like you no good to be cooped up with the rest of us old fogies! Perhaps one of those Muggle amusements – talkies, I think, they are called?" He leaned back in his chair and surveyed Severus' gobsmacked expression.

"Er, perhaps?" Severus managed. _Talkies_?

"Good, good!" Dumbledore waved a benevolent hand. "I hear they have color now, and some _really_ fine effects!"

Severus rose to his feet and backed out of the office, mumbling something about seeing to a potion. He staggered down to the dungeons, torn between hysterical merriment and bone-shaking terror, the image of Lily's face in his mind's eye all the time. Maybe go see a movie next time, she'd said. I'll be seeing you, Severus.

When he'd calmed sufficiently to attempt rational thought, he found he was certain that his suspicions were justified. He could not tell how far Dumbledore was involved, and what else he knew, but that wasn't really important at the moment. If Dumbledore did know more, Severus' experience told him there was no way to get it out of him until he was ready. He would have to be on his own for this. At least, now he had a starting point.

He apparated into Glasgow each Friday night, making the rounds of the city's cinemas starting from the center of town. He sat for interminable hours, staring at the screen, analyzing the images and the words for he knew not what – some secret code perhaps, some map to where Lily was now. He felt, at times, that this is not what a sane person would do.

Two months passed like this before she appeared to him.

It was in an obscure arty little cinema specializing in incomprehensible work by assorted foreigners. He had come there for the third time, drawn by the purity of the imagery unfettered by any dictates of narrative. The offering on that particular night was something in Russian called _The Mirror_, and as Severus understood, had to do with doomed love and war, though it also seemed to be saying something about fathers and sons and the way history repeats itself. He didn't dare stop reading the subtitles in case there was a message there, so he almost missed it when the woman with the red-gold hair on the screen turned around and looked at him, wearing Lily's face. The next moment, she was gone again, but Severus stayed until the film was over, then sat through the following features, all the way until the end. When the house finally emptied, he staggered outside. His eyes hurt; he realized that all this time he had not dared so much as to blink.

After that, he tried to get out during the week as well, if he was not on school patrol duty. He put off Malfoy's invitations with the flimsiest of excuses, earning himself a stirring speech from Dumbledore on the subject of constant vigilance, so important in the métier of espionage.

Sometimes, he was lucky. He caught glimpses of her standing on the deck of a ship, riding a horse, looking into mirrors, windows, ornamental pools. In the _Duchess of Malfi_, she appeared as a man. "She is what you would have her," Lily said, looking straight at Severus as she turned from the dead woman at her feet. "Do you not weep? Other sins only speak; murder shrieks out." Severus stared back, frozen in horror. "The element of water moistens the earth, but blood flies upward and bedews the heavens," she continued implacably.

It was the only time he heard her speak, though it seemed to him that she tried, unsuccessfully. Had she broken through, come this close, only to bring home the guilt he had already fully accepted? Did he not weep - what bloody kind of question was that?

He rather thought it wasn't like Lily to expend all this effort just to make him feel terrible. It was especially not like the Lily he had seen last, who had been acting peculiar but very sure of herself. That Lily had known full well what she was doing and what she was saying, and she had clearly come to give him a message, which would mean that she had at least an inkling of what was about to happen, and she had known she would be able to communicate with him this way. None of this, as far as Severus knew, had anything to do with the effects of _Avada Kedavra_. There was something else going on here; something Severus had a chance of fixing – otherwise, why would she bother with all this?

Thus, Severus set to unraveling the puzzle. The words were important; speaking had seemed to take a lot out of Lily – he didn't see her for another three months afterwards, and when he did, the image was so faint as to almost be just an accident of lighting turning dark hair red and casting a greenish tint over grey eyes. On the chance that _The Duchess of Malfi _was important, he bought annotated copies of the original play and perused them between classes, with special attention to the lines Lily had spoken. The play itself, he supposed, could relate to the Dark Lord and Lily's death – there were the power struggles, the murdered families, the madness. With a sting of shame, Severus considered the character of Daniel Bosola, the spy who efficiently facilitated the horrors, then when it was far too late to save anyone, decided to feel bad about what he'd done and switched sides, then accidentally killed the person whose side he was switching to. But all this about Bosola being a gigantic fuck-up was not exactly helpful. Severus flipped through to the end again, which did not seem helpful either. Bosola died killing the villains, which was what Severus expected but failed to shed any light on the question of Lily.

Next, Severus tried analyzing the words Lily had spoken. The element of water could be an allusion to Slytherin, he supposed. Slytherins and shrieking murder. But Lily was not the dead woman at Bosola's feet. Dead people did not act this way; he'd done his research. She was missing, not lost, and she was trying to get through to him so he could save her. All he was doing was failing her all over again.

Then he began compiling data on where he'd seen her. Genre didn't seem to matter, but there was a definite bent towards scenes set in woods and fields. He thought it was suggestive, and a promising avenue for further research, that most appearances by far happened near a reflective surface. Some very powerful magic was done with mirrors and likenesses.

In time, the first feverish rush of activity wore off, leaving him with several additions to his routine – watch film, document any appearances, research. Remembering that Malfoy owned an excellent magical library, Severus even pulled himself together and reapplied himself to the assiduous cultivation of his Death Eater associates.

Then, altogether too soon, Harry Potter was eleven, sitting in the Great Hall and examining him suspiciously. The quiet, dull years were over.

And then the Dark Lord returned. "What do you mean, _he is not dead_?" Severus demanded, stomping around Dumbledore's office; he barely restrained himself from adding, "It is _Lily_ who isn't dead." Dumbledore would not have taken kindly to that. Other than his initial hint about going to the _talkies_, he had given no sign of acknowledging the situation. In any case, it was clear that Severus would not have much spare time now. Wherever Lily was, it appeared that she was at least safe, which was more than could be said for her son and his friends.

Throughout it all Severus found that the last words Lily had spoken to him had worked their inextricable way into the fabric of his life. Do you not weep, her voice echoed in his ears like a heartbeat, over and over again. Murder shrieks out, she sighed at the back of his mind as he stood in the masked and robed circle. Murder did shriek out, to no avail.

Then Severus watched Albus Dumbledore fall over the parapet (but blood flies upward and bedews the heavens!) and knew that he was exactly like Bosola, no matter how much he'd tried to avoid it. He was a gigantic fuck-up, unable to escape from his murderous destiny, and the last thing left for him to do was to die crossing the Dark Lord. He would have to accept that he had failed Lily in all possible ways; he would do what he could for those he could still help.

He was only a little surprised when the Dark Lord threw Nagini at him, and then, impossibly, Potter was there, leaning over him and fixing him with that stare of his. "Look at me," he said, looking at his own tiny reflection in Potter's pupils and hoping against hope that Lily would appear one last time, but to the very end Potter's eyes remained his own. Maybe that was good enough, Severus thought as he sank into the salty crimson tide that was rising up and covering him, sweeping him out to sea.

When he opened his eyes, the blood was gone. He was in what seemed to be an empty too-clean railway washroom. The rumbling of a train echoed through the walls, shaking the exposed pipes. Somewhere, water was dripping. Severus heard the door creak open and turned around.

"Severus, my boy!" said Albus Dumbledore.

"Really," said Severus. "Did you _intend_ for all this to end like a Jacobean tragedy, with corpses all over the stage?"

"Ah," Dumbledore said. "But it isn't quite over and things may turn out better than you think – remember, all is not what it seems. Surely, you of all people should know that."

"Some things are _exactly_ what they seem," Severus said. "Unfortunately. Please tell me this is not some demented Divine Comedy with you leading me around Hell and pontificating like a particularly unhinged Virgil.

Another train passed, closer this time. The sink fixtures and pipes rattled and clinked, and a piece of plaster detached itself from the ceiling, landing in a puff of white dust on the tiled floor.

When the dust cleared, Dumbledore was smiling. "I think I can, in fact, promise you that much," he said. He took Severus' arm and gently turned him around. "Why don't you just take a look in this mirror, now."

Severus opened his mouth to protest, and froze. The mirror showed a dark room, with only a dim sliver of light outlining the slowly opening door. As the door opened, the wedge of light falling into the room grew and widened, illuminating the woman sitting in the wooden rocking chair. "Lily," said Severus. "Lily!"

She stood up and smiled at Severus, and he noticed the infant-shaped bundle in her arms. "Severus!" she said. "I knew you'd get here! I think this means I can go now. A train just came in, and they said there's someone there who can take him now." She gestured at the bundle in her arms.

"Wait, Lily," said Severus. "Don't go!"

"I'll only be a minute," Lily said, moving towards the doorway. "I will come back, I promise." She disappeared into the streaming light.

"What was…" Severus said, turning to Dumbledore. "What was that all about? Will she really be back?"

"I believe so," Dumbledore smiled at him. "As you have suspected all along, she is not actually dead. When Voldemort cast the Killing Curse at her, he meant to bind up a piece of his soul in hers, so that it might be safe with her on the other side.

"But surely…." Severus stammered.

"Quite right, my boy. It was to be the culmination of a complex process, which Voldemort had apparently put quite some effort and planning into. You will recall that he approached her three times, asking her to join him. Of course, he was never really foolish enough to believe that Lily Evans would become a Death Eater. It is my surmise that these invitations were really spells he created to summon and bind her to this duty. It may be that his accidental creation of an additional Horcrux in young Harry weakened the binding. It may be that Lily took some steps of her own –love, after all, is an unfathomable force, capable of the greatest miracles."

"But how did you know to tell me…"

"Ah, it seemed the most helpful thing to do. And, of course, you could have done with some amusement."`

In the distance, there was a sound of approaching footsteps. Severus turned back to the mirror. Lily was walking back towards them, the rays of light behind her shifting and setting her hair ablaze. Her arms were empty.

"I gave him to Mrs Lestrange to take care of," she said. "I think she's feeling better now. Why are you looking at me that way?"

"But it's… Voldemort. You were taking care of Voldemort?" Severus said.

"It's a _baby_," Lily said fiercely. "I will never, ever, just _leave_ a baby, under any circumstances, no matter what. Severus, why don't you give me a hand getting out of here."

He only had time to feel her cool fingers grasp his. Then they were both falling through darkness, hand in hand, while a great wind rushed around them and the roars of the passing trains faded into silence.

He woke up in the Hogwarts infirmary, with a headache and a bandaged throat. Lily and her son sat on the neighboring bed, talking quietly to each other.

"Potter!" he gasped. "You're… alive." His throat felt as though he'd swallowed a bag of nails.

They looked up at him, and Lily quirked an eyebrow.

"You aren't supposed to talk," she said. "But, yes. It seems there was a way all along. Didn't Dumbledore tell you? Of course he didn't, infuriating old man. _Don't_ talk," she added, seeing Severus about to open his mouth again. "Poppy should be in with your potions in a few minutes; after that we'll talk. About everything. I promise."

Since he could not talk, Severus contented himself with looking at her. She had aged at the same rate as he had (though far more gracefully) – another proof that she had been alive all this time. Her eyes were kinder, and her youthful spirit and exuberance – what leering fools liked to call feistiness – had settled into a mature confidence.

He had carried her bright image in his heart all these years like a last forlorn hope. Sometimes she had been the girl on the swing, sometimes the beautiful and unattainable young woman, laughing as she twirled hand in hand with her new husband. Later, the tragic heroine, looking into the mirror, looking into the water.

And now she was finally here, as though all this time she had been travelling, a long and arduous journey, to sit down on the cot across from him in the Hogwarts infirmary.

For a long moment – and it might have been the pain potions – his head swirled; he thought of how well he knew her and how he didn't know her at all, and also how he didn't know himself anymore, and they were both now entirely different people but also the same, and how rare it is in life to get a second chance that one is actually capable of taking. Baby steps, Dumbledore had told him, a propos something-or-other, baby steps. He would take the huge, impossible, painful thing that had been his love, and he would make it something possible to live with,


End file.
